AudiencScapes

The World Bank's CGAP Technology Blog recently posted an article about
InterMedia's AudienceScapes' Haiti Mobile Money Tracker.  A tool created to
examine a series of household surveys, commissioned by the Gates Foundation in
2010, that helped monitor the impact of USAID and the Gates Foundation's Haiti
Mobile Money Initiative.  An initiative that featured a $10 million fund to
provide incentives to mobile service providers to quickly launch and expand
mobile money (m-money) services. 

InterMedia Senior Project Manager Giovanna Monteverde on a recent research trip to Haiti visited with a Digicel Tcho Tcho mobile money agent to find out more about this new service. Giovanna also observed the great difficulty most Haitians must go through to perform everyday financial transactions.

In December 2010, two mobile money (m-money) services were launched in Haiti - a country where financial services have always been thin on the ground, and never more so than since the January 2010 earthquake, which destroyed 30 percent to 40 percent of bank branches and ATMs. A flash AudienceScapes survey of Haitian adults conducted 9-29 January 2011 gives some indication of how quickly word is getting around for the services.

The Nairobi-based Ushahidi has played a role in almost every major disaster to hit the globe this year. With a commitment to free and open source software, the developers hope to constantly improve the crowdsourcing platform and use it wherever it is needed. Here, Dinfin Mulupi talks to one of the founders. By Dinfin Mulupi “Any techies out there willing to do a mash-up of where the violence and destruction is using Google Maps?” read a post on the blog of Kenyan Lawyer, Ory Okolloh. The date was January 3, 2008, barely a week after the outbreak of post-election violence that led to the death of 1,300 people and displacement of more than 300,000 people. The government had just banned live broadcasts and media outlets struggled to report the ongoing violence throughout the country.

by David Montez, AudienceScapes Research Analyst8 June 2010In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010, the media proved once again to be a crucial element in how humanitarian agencies respond to such crises. New and old forms of communication were utilized to communicate between responders and victims and to coordinate efforts between agencies and NGOs. Recently, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) held a panel discussion to discuss how humanitarian media was used in Haiti and what lessons could be gleaned from the experience.